…..:::::|. The Tawny Swan .|:::::…..
The wee hours of early morning found all the farers in some sort of poor state or another.
They’d reached the horde of docking ports at The Curtain and were about to be boarded for inspection. So, every traveller and shipmate had been required to show face on the top deck.
Percival checked each of the woleanki’s conditions and they were not sitting or standing in the most awake manner. He noted Veygornne’s yawn as he watched the Gaennish borderguard make check after check of their own papers before stepping across the couplings to make unnecessary check after check of the farers papers.
This was the Margravess’s vessel, which had already gone under meticulous inspection before she’d even given it to Percival. All of that information would have been dutifully passed along to these borderguard long before they’d arrived.
The only new addition to this ship’s records would have been their fulfilled promissory which had already been registered back in the port city but Veygornne and Percival both knew all umpteen locks were going to be opened in order to check if contraband had been stashed inside.
Technically, Siin’s Terile Function was a highly illegal substance; considered lethal in dosage by toxicity experts around the world, so his vial series was going to need special inspection. Siin had remembered this but he’d complained to Percival about it the whole time bringing his satchels up to the top deck.
As the guards above them on the tower prepared to step down to the deck, Siin again raised the question. “Why can’t we put one on the ship?” He said half-asleep, his hair still in the shape his pillow mussed it into.
“Voidhearth’s need to be stationary in order to work, Siin. You know this. You’re sleepy.”
“But if you link its null to another point on land...shouldn’t that...make it, like...I dunno...stable?”
“I understand you’re annoyed, Ynggrloch, but you’re an aBn.”
He rolled his sleep-heavy eyes. “All they see is Zhuer. So what does it matter my demeanor?”
“That’s not all you are.” Percival’s voice was serious, reverent, almost. Siin sighed looking at him. Then he nodded and straightened himself sure, blinking very hard in the process.
As the borderguard, encased in far too much black armour, boarded the deck of the Tawny Swan the shipmates and travellers all stepped much closer together. They felt more like small canned fish than elite soldiers. Siin overheard the girls chuckling and yammering on about names or such as each shipmate was asked for their travelling papers.
“Oh, but I really liked the name.” Kodlaa yawned.
“What name?” Siin asked, pulling a roll of papers from his belongings. His hair was still undone.
“Asynnada.” Kodlaa perked up in her tiredness with her arm hooked into Halycind’s. Her hair had small rods all through it, supposedly to keep her curls fresh but her hair had slipped away from their intended use and was mainly hanging in wavy strings about her head. “Cash, had been dreaming of a litter of girls and she wanted to name one Asynnada, because one of her grandmothers was named that.”
“Pretty.” Siin huddled in with them, having procured all he needed. “Sounds Ammol. Like al Synnadh.”
“Say that again.” Halycind urged in a kind of concerned wonder with one eye open. The other one was still asleep.
“What? al Synnadh?”
“That’s how it was said in my dream.” Halycind didn’t know what to make of anything at the moment and something struck a small fear in her.
“Caw, really?” Kodlaa smiled largely. “You two got some sort of brain thing goin’ on.”
“Or perhaps she’d heard it said that way in childhood and her dream served it back to her now.” Siin demystified.
“Perhaps. Or could be my memories from Snakemeld Library serving me things I’d read. My great grandmother’s parents got the name from one of the Zhuer books down there.” Halycind yawned very largely. “We have a lot of books down there.”
“Do people still go down to the Sinking Library?” Siin asked genuinely and with a measure of concern.
“Not as many as before. It's gotten quite deep now.”
“Ugh, I'm sure the Villa will need to be called in to fix that.” He said, making an annoyed face.
“The Villa's what put it there.” Kodlaa blurted being slightly pushed over by a shipmate showing papers.
“Right, that's why I’m certain we’ll need to fix that. But the material it was built out of was enchanted by a Deep Mage and we don’t have any more of those, so…”
“Wassat?” Halycind questioned.
“An enchanter, a ritualist. Primarily self-taught. A hedge, if you will.” Siin yawned again, waking up.
“Oh, don’t those turn into that thing you killed?”
Others on the boat looked at them then to the mage standing there with alarmed eyes.
“A Haggius.” Siin calmed their looks, fist full of papers flapping their worries down. And the guardsman waved it all off and went back to doing their job. “No Kodlaa. A Haggius is a degenerated fae creature...more beast than anything else.” He looked at Halycind again for the moment and almost smiled. “No, a Deep Mage was a very sane person practicing magery on their own in the form of very long casts, enchantments, and the what.”
“Oof. You know a lot.” Kodlaa blinked. There was a shipmate beside her who also nodded and smiled.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Indeed he does, but we’ll need to see the Zhuer’s permits and papers now.” The borderguardsman burst in to say as he faced Siin with beckoning palm.
“It’s...nevermind. Here.” Siin started to correct him with his new title but he no longer cared to impress these Gaennish. He pulled the first of his official papers. “Certification of Travel Clearance.” Then another. “Medics Confluence Certification of Blood and Ethnic Lineage; in lieu of my Certificate of Birth.” The guard looked at him. “I was a homeless orphan.” Then Siin passed him another paper. “Here. My aBn Tera Villa Issuance in Notice of Magus Talent.”
“Oh, you’re an aBn?”
“Yeah, I was gonna say that befo—nevermind. Here’s my Villa Submitted and Toxicity Board Approved Terile Function Permit: Part in Part of The First. My Permit of the Second. Part in Part of the Second. Part in Part of The Third. And Permit of the Third…and my Identifier of Person: Honorific and Title.”
The guard, practiced in all this hullabaloo, kept up with Siin’s endless presentation of official papers. The girls, however, were genuinely stunned, being royal themselves. They had no such stack of identifiers as this.
The guard chuckled a bit glancing over Siin’s Identifier of Person.
“Something funny?” Siin raised.
“Uh, no Ser, there’s just so many names of places that no longer exist.”
“Right. Occupation’ll do that.”
The guard caught his derisive tone, squinted hard behind his armoured encasing, then turned a call to another guard rifling through shipmate’s bags and satchels. “Poisons and Toxins!”
Siin rolled his eyes hard. He didn’t want their uneducated hands all over his nice things but he knew he’d have to suck it all down to get through this.
With a reciprocated eyeroll, the guard moved on to Halycind beside him.
“Ah, you’re a Princess.” He mentioned looking over her simple roll of two papers, then into her eyes, both now open. “You’re too fine a ma’dam not be adorned in regalia.”
“You are to inspect her papers. Not her.” Siin’s voice rippled across his lips in triplicate and hung in the air between the three like grim hissing whispers on chilled thundering winds.
The guard was stricken will-less and dutifully looked down to view the travel papers in his hands. “Right. Yes. Her papers.”
Halycind looked to Siin almost deathly afraid of what she’d just witness. That didn’t sound like the Siin she thought she knew. She was sure of it now. That was aBn Charm and it was starkly more course than any of the other playful suggestions he’d charmed in passing before. This is what he’d promised he’d never use on her.
The thought washed over her again from the moment they’d re-met; the moment he’d told her, back in Ladi Gru Has, that he’d taken the rights to become aBn. This was what she’d first dread upon hearing that term and title.
aBn were dangerous. Siin, her friend, the one who’d ensnared Marvynn, slit the Haggius’s throat with its own magic, spoke this guard’s will away...was dangerous.
As the guard dutifully moved on to Kodlaa and then Veygornne, Siin’s entire demeanor turned him to rest on the bow of the Tawny Swan to watch the wee morning sun cut a red line all along the waters’ horizon. He knew Halycind didn't know what to make of him in the moment but he just wanted to leave this place for it was turning him into something he didn't want her to see.
So he peered out to his left on to the ocean they would hopefully soon be released to. To his right he could just catch Halycind staring at him, the enormity of the metal curtain behind her.
It was massive that structure. A marvel of machinery curtaining the entirety of the southern most coastal shelf of The Great Island. A bulwark in the waters. A metal wall of whistles and cogs and wheels and belts and pistons; mounted with vessel sinking artillery and long-sighted scouts along all its length. It was continuously praised by the world’s engineers and scholars as one of the most impressive feats of engineering man could have ever built, but all Siin saw it as, was a permanent way of keeping his people out.
As she watched him look pass her in the moment, Halycind saw the great structure—she’d once been wowed by before—just the same as Siin saw it now. A wall...between civilities.
She liked him, Siin. A lot. But she didn't know him very well. She thought she did. She’d thought she had grasped the whole of who he’d become, but not only had the ten year absence from one another suddenly been made obvious, she also saw the Zhuer in him. The accursed subkin the rest of the world reviled.
And she hated it. She hated knowing he might have faced such ugly words and ugly deeds from ugly people outside of her presence.
Perhaps these pains were what drove him to become dangerous.
His words to that guard were real and heated, but he’d done it for her; in defense of her honour. No less than what an Ashok man would have done if he’d felt offended by that guard’s approach. Without her knowing, her hand reached toward him on the railing of their ship. “Thank you. aBn.” She uttered, staring at him with the moons and stars vignetting his fine figure.
The soft roll of his concerned brow took the blackness from the air between them as his expression urged her to not treat him differently. “Please, call me ‘Siin’.” He begged.
She nodded. “Very well. Siin.” Her voice was small and he wanted to caress her soft golden-bronze cheek but she looked apprehensive as she stared upon him. He smiled to her, instead, and she offered him one in return.
Kodlaa came and tapped Halycind’s wrist to look over something she and Veygornne had seen on his maps and Halycind left his view to regard her.
Then Siin’s whole expression changed from warm concern to bewildered slap.
Behind where she’d stood, on part of The Curtain’s walled workings he saw the glints and sparking purple-orange hisses of Deep Craft. A mark he’d only seen in books. He looked about himself to catch if anyone else had seen this darkly sparkling thing but none seemed to be affected by something that surely shouldn’t exist.
A circle. An elongated chevron piercing through it. And five scratch marks intersecting the circle in seemingly random places. A peculiar mark he'd not seen outside of his studies at the Villa. It was crudely scratched in, almost erratic in its dull magical pulse but his magically attuned eyesight could see how deeply powerful this mark was already. There were no more Deep Mages, he thought. So enchantments like this would have had to have been set sometime back during the Blue Era. But this accursed Curtain hadn’t been erected until just over one-hundred cycles ago; during Gaen’s first Occupation of Buraamira.
He'd seen drawings of a massive armillary-like artifact with this very mark upon it in his books but neither the artifact nor the meanings of this mark had ever been found or fully explained. The Void Mark or Mark of the Void had been coined this out of secret rumors between magi around the world, regardless of affiliation. The Villa magi made murmurs it was a zeromancer’s creation; something to make a substance or object unbreakable, he'd heard them say. The mages in the Spine of Jyr thought it to be some mark of a hedge mage society, secretly off in the frozen mountains of the ‘Cicled North near Kempka ev a Buerna.
But Siin thought it to be something altogether different. Not a point of power but something more utilitarian, functional, almost like a tool to form the strongest kind of link or exchange that could be made between two points in space; one point giving its force into the other. To him, it wildly pointed to a mark that could form temporal connections.
He hummed and made a note to himself to understand why something of this nature would be on a Gaennish device.
Siin heard Veygornne’s laugh as the girls looked on him with utter amazement. He’d been telling them more tall tales, Siin imagined, given their wild expressions. Wolvkin were such a comfort to him. They didn’t like lies or falsehoods or fostering such behaviours but they loved stories of impossible feats as they knew they were just that. Impossible.
His curiosity made him look back at The Curtain, even as their inspection was approved and approved and approved again. This wall was impossible. A hundred year old reminder that the Zhuer could never be what they once were.